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Mandatory Worker Participation Is Required In A Declining Union Environment To Provide Employees With Meaningful Industrial Democracy, Charles B. Craver

GW Law Faculty Publications & Other Works

For many years, American workers directly or indirectly benefited from union representation. The 30-35 percent of employees actually represented by labor organizations in the late 1950s and early 1960s had their wages and benefits negotiated by those unions. Nonunion workers obtained similar benefits from employers seeking to remain nonunion. Over the past 50 years, private sector union membership has declined significantly to under 8 percent today. The individual employee has no bargaining power and must accept whatever he or she is offered. Workers have no say in firm decisions that directly affect their employment security and working conditions. The U.S. …